[206] in Coldmud discussion meeting

Re: confusion

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sat Apr 9 11:24:20 1994 )

To: the Lynx <BRANDON@cc.usu.edu>
Cc: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 31 Mar 1994 12:22:12 CST."
             <01HAMDWHDGTEB8NPTN@cc.usu.edu> 
Date: Sat, 09 Apr 1994 10:18:46 -0500
From: Erik Ostrom <eostrom@pepperoncini.gac.edu>

> < As a corellary to point 2 should the core methods that add a parameter
> < also add the set and retrieve methods for the parameter (pehaps based on
> < a template?) This would of course be modifiable, but would then be 
> < useful in preventing typing in the accessor each time. alternately
> < a template accessor could be called or inherited, although im unclear
> < on how to inherit a uniqely named method. 
> 
> I would definitely say no.  This is because doing such a thing would lead to
> bad coding immediately, where people yearning for MOO would just fall back in
> to MOO patterns.  Often times you do not even WANT to have direct
> accessor methods for values, an example would be $input and
> $input_parser at tCD.  $input has two parameters ,receiving and
> ,input.  ,input is only added to by .new_line() 

You don't always want a setter method, but you do pretty often (at
least I do), and it's a pain to write one each time.  On JH, I wrote a
verb "@make-setter <object>.<property>" which installs the standard
thing.  It might make sense to do this, and also provide commands that
automatically make add/delete methods, or push/pop methods, or
whatever you commonly use.

It might also make sense to make whatever your equivalent of @property
is take an extra argument (or more than one) that specifies whether
you want to have setter/adder/deleter/whatever methods added at the
same time.